<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

This article proposes a model which addresses the issue of hybrid threats in four stages including 1) the analysis and identification of hybrid threats, 2) the designation and selection of tools, 3) building-up resilience and capacities and 4) assessment and evaluation. The article might be considered as an initial contribution to the debate about the build-up of the security architecture at the state level and may provide some inspiration for policy-makers and academia engaged in international security issues. The emphasis is put on “soft” domains of security, especially in relation to the cognitive-emotional element of the hybrid environment which is in the times of Covid-19 and the new Russian hybrid type of warfare becoming increasing significant.
</abstract>

Preventing Hybrid Threats: From Identification to an Effective Response

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The referendum initiative of 2021 is the fourth attempt in Slovakia to call a referendum on early parliamentary elections in less than 30 years. The aim of this article is to answer the question of whether the shortening of the parliamentary term by referendum is in accordance with the Slovak Constitution. Since the shortening of parliamentary term by referendum is a constitutional issue which is a question of identity common to all European democracies, the authors analyse the existence of such direct democracy instrument in the Council of Europe member states and compare the relevant constitutional framework with the Slovak Constitution. The authors’ opinion is that the referendum on early elections contradicts not only several constitutional provisions, but also the overall philosophy of the Slovak Constitution and Western-type democracy.
</abstract>

Associate Professor at the Comenius University in Bratislava – Faculty of Law

Referendum on early elections: The case of Slovakia in the European context

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The article deals with the Slovak Constitutional Court’s approach to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights as a potential source of constitutional review. It analyses selected SCC decisions in order to evaluate and generalise the SCC attitude. The main focus is on defining the constitutional status of the EU Charter within the Slovak constitutional order. The up-to-date practice of the Constitutional Court is associated with an inevitable confusion when formally the Charter belongs among the sources of constitutional review, but by applying the doctrine of self-restriction, the SCC uses it only in a subsidiary way or in the form of a soft interpretation instrument to support its reasoning.
</abstract>

Associate Professor of Constitutional Law at the Department of Constitutional Law and Legal Theory at the University of Matej Bel Faculty of Law

In Supporting Role Cast: The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights

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EU-Central Asia (CA) relations have developed significantly over recent years. Nowadays, both regions are gong through of a unique global hybrid crisis with major challenges for business and social environment. An international partnership under the follow up on fundamental principles and trends of a global development framework is of prime importance. The article aims to address some of the issues outlined in the Decent Work Agenda which is a core doctrine of the 2030 Agenda’s concept and that are relevant to the CA countries. At first the article looks at a brief conceptual overview of the economic transformation of CA economies and role of sustainable business environment in achieving sustainable development goals. The authors discuss the promotion of EU values in employment relations and social dialogue in CA as a precondition for productive and decent employment. Finally, the article article concludes that the theoretical approach to the EU support programmes and instruments followed by their practical implications should be multi- dimensional in nature and benefit from direct in-situ exposure. Furthermore, a comparative assessment approach by experts on benefits of the EU external programmes is badly needed for EU and CA.
</abstract>

PhD in Public Administration, a Sworn Advocate and Senior Researcher at the Riga Stradins University

EU – Central Asia Partnership for Conducive Business Environment and Decent Work

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The COVID-19 crisis has revealed a steady demand for professional journalism as an essential public service. However, the disfunction of the conventional advertising-supported business model has affected an overwhelming proportion of the industry workforce. This article contributes to the discussion on thinkable solutions. It argues that the pandemic has created further empirical evidence to support Habermasian ideas of providing a lifeline for the quality press as a vital contributor to the public sphere, a pillar of good governance in Western democracies. Amid the global challenge posed by the emergency, professional news organizations have proven their essentiality as providers of reliable information vital to tackle healthcare system and policymaking tasks. However, the legacy media are progressively less able to perform their social functions, losing the competition for revenue to the Big Tech. Therefore, liberal democracies should fund independent journalism to ensure the latter remains strong in the post-coronavirus world, holding the political systems accountable. The paper concludes that the pandemic has fostered an environment conducive to translating the feasible policy options into concrete political steps, regulation and lawmaking.
</abstract>

Pandemic Lessons for Democracies: High Time to Provide Journalism as Essential Service with a Financial Lifeline

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The role of the societies and their interaction with public administration is changing toward ever closer co-operation. Since 2009 scientific literature and the public administrations themselves have been increasingly exploring the changing and dynamic role of the recipient of public services, a client or a customer, as that of a partner in the provision of public services. In this article the authors propose a policy client-accordance index (PCAX) methodology to measure the relevance of a) policy planned results and policy-makers’ expectations in relation to b) clients’ intentions, and explore the co-production in the age of digitalization based on a case study. The idea of the article is to contribute to this necessity of new tools and approaches to facilitate the co-operation and co-production between policy makers and society. The main goal of the research is to analyse the applicability and challenging aspects of the feasibility of PCAX and to test the possible transfer of the developed methodology model for evaluating the relevance of any public administration policy to the intentions of the policy‘s respective target group, i.e., the client-accordance index of a given public policy. In the first and the second chapters of the article, mostly based on the findings of scientific literature analyses, the authors explore the increasing topicality and the need of changing awareness of a public a service and its provision. Further in-depth analyses are conducted on the possible methodological tool to measure the relevance between the policy makers’ decisions (expectations) and society‘s needs and intentions. In the concluding chapter of the article the authors summarize the development dynamics of societal reforms towards co-production, main implementation aspects of the concept and remarks on PCAX backed up by the findings of the approbation of PCAX elements in the actual case study.
</abstract>

Dr.sc.admin, is the head and full-time lecturer at the Department of International Business and Economics in Riga Stradins University

Dr.oec. is the Project Manager at the Centre for European and Transition Studies of the University of Latvia

Public Services Client-Accordance Through Coproduction and Digitalization

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Entrepreneurship related research has developed rapidly during the recent decades. It is of interest for every country in the European Union to foster increase of newly created enterprises and thus employment and economic dynamism. The main goal of this paper is centred on motivational factors that contribute to people’s involvement in business in Latvia. At first, the article looks at the development of factors that influence entrepreneurial motivation in context of <italic>push</italic> and <italic>pull</italic> theoretical framework. Subsequently, the analysis of an empirical study is carried out. The study analyzes factors that promote or hinder starting a business in context of <italic>push</italic> and pull framework. The results offer important conclusions regarding the main motivators for starting a business. Majority of the existing and potential entrepreneurs are motivated by the <italic>pull</italic> factors (i.e., appropriate character, skills and knowledge, willingness to support their family members or earn more). The motivation can be further triggered by the <italic>push</italic> factors, such as tax benefits or favourable business legislation. Nevertheless, the <italic>push</italic> factors alone cannot boost creation of new enterprises as operate in tandem with the <italic>pull</italic> factors.
</abstract>

PhD, Assistant Professor, Riga Stradins University

Analysis of Push and Pull Factors for Starting a Business in Latvia

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Climate change has begun to make itself felt also in Europe. The article seeks to identify responses to the challenges from the law through the protection of fundamental rights to life, health, occupation and property, as well as ‘environmental rights’, and private law rights. It establishes that, in spite of a general consensus that these rights are guaranteed and protected by the law, it is practically very difficult to substantively show and prove a violation of such a right. Following this, the enforcement of these rights by individuals and environmental protection organisations is explored, in particular looking at the Peoples’ Climate Case recently dismissed by the European Court of Justice. In doing so, the article will suggest solutions <italic>de lege ferenda</italic>, including some sketches as to how to develop individual and associations’ rights further in order to increase pressure on political processes to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and to compensate for climate-change-induced losses. The article concludes by identifying a gap in traditional legal protection of human rights, first, regarding the rules on showing and proving that a specific activity or failure to act has resulted in a specific damage. Secondly, an extension of standing for individual applicants regarding legislative acts, and a relaxation of the definition of individual concern, as well as an extension of standing to climate change organisations are suggested as options to bring mitigation and adaptation to climate change forward. Overall, the law may have to choose between adapting legal instruments in order to maintain classical human rights protection in the face of new challenges or accepting a gap in the protective system for short-term gains of current business and our daily convenience.
</abstract>

Economic and Legal Issues of Climate Change in the EU

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While current climate and environmental efforts are mostly focused on the necessary and urgent CO2 emissions cuts, energy transition and climate adaptation, other not least pressing issues such as <italic>air quality</italic> start reaching the political agenda (European Commission, 2019). In this paper, we address air pollution from the <italic>social welfare perspective</italic> and bring together two strings of literature on the productivity of green urban infrastructure for ambient air quality and the monetisation of air quality improvements. Based on the <italic>EU air quality data</italic> by country and city, we identify those regions, which would benefit most from improved urban green infrastructure to improve air quality performance in Europe. We review a set of academic literature on the impact of urban green combating urban air pollution, and provide a synthesis review of social externality costs connected to urban air pollution. We extrapolate, in a stylized manner, the effect of increasing urban vegetation throughout the EU and in a selection of EU cities. Our estimates show that additional 1m2 of green cover throughout the EU cities would lead to 65,9 mln EUR of benefit per year, split about equally between the benefits of improved air quality and carbon sequestration, equivalent to 976 euros per ha per year for air pollutants and 1024 euros per ha per year for carbon abatement.
</abstract>

Assistant Professor in Land and Urban Economics at the University of Twente

researcher at Utrecht University School of Economics

Greening of European Cities: Social Benefits of Urban Nature for Urban Air Quality

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Due to today’s great societal challenges, such as climate change, demographic boom, resource scarcity, urban settlements find themselves trained in a tense race of reforming their urban development strategies. Turning cities into smart settlements, by improving their waste management and energy consumption seems like the only viable solution for a prosperous and sustainable future. Moreover, statistics show that smart cities create an auspicious environment for the establishment of start-up, as they provide incentives for citizens with creative and entrepreneurial skills. Accordingly, the objective of the current study is twofold: in the first instance, we would like to prove the existence of a causal link between the level of smart orientation in a city and the spread of start-ups, namely, the smarter the city, the bigger the number of start-ups, and vice versa by choosing as our case study, a city from the North-Western development region of Romania, Oradea; secondly, we stress, that the promotion of a collaborative governance model by the city leadership, involving all the stakeholders in the decision-making process enables smart orientation within a city.
</abstract>

Collaborative Governance for Smart and Sustainable Cities of the 21st Century. Case Study: The City of Oradea

AHEAD OF PRINT

Volume 10 (2023): Issue 1 (December 2023)

Volume 9 (2022): Issue 2 (December 2022)

Volume 9 (2022): Issue 1 (August 2022)

Volume 8 (2021): Issue 1 (December 2021)

Volume 7 (2020): Issue 1 (December 2020)

Volume 6 (2019): Issue 1 (December 2019)

European Studies

European Studies – The Review of European Law, Economics and Politics is a peer-reviewed periodical, originally established as a year-book of the Czech Association for European Studies and Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence in EU Law at Faculty of Law, Palacký University Olomouc. Since 2022, it has been published as a semi-annual review released twice a year. The presented journal reflects the interdisciplinary character of this scientific society; therefore, it is not limited to only one discipline within the European studies; on the contrary, it pursues a multi-disciplinary approach and analyses various aspects of the European integration. That is why the concept of the journal integrates scientific articles and expertise not only from the field of European law but also from European economy, European political science, EC/EU history and other relevant disciplines relating to the analysis of supranational entities as well.  Archiving  Sciendo archives the contents of this journal in Portico - digital long-term preservation service of scholarly books, journals and collections.  Plagiarism Policy  The editorial board is participating in a growing community of Similarity Check System's users in order to ensure that the content published is original and trustworthy. Similarity Check is a medium that allows for comprehensive manuscripts screening, aimed to eliminate plagiarism and provide a high standard and quality peer-review process. 